Spartans Athletic Director “making every possible effort for Spartan Nation to be in the stands this fall”

<p>“It has been a very active year for us,” Beekman tells White. “With the challenges of the pandemic we've been facing, it really is quite extraordinary. Our team has done a really special job. I would be remiss to not acknowledge the work of our athletic trainers as the sort of frontline workers in athletics. They have administered literally thousands and thousands of COVID tests, and they've provided athletic training support to over 700 athletes whose schedules were really compressed. With the exception of football, most were compressed into a very, very narrow window with all of our sports being in competition between January and now of 2021. </p><p>“We are very happy and lucky that we were able to get every team into competition, with the exception of women's gymnastics. Every other team had the ability to compete despite cancellations and postponements. I'm very excited that so far we have two Big Ten Championship teams; our women's cross country team, and most recently our women's golf team with a great win.</p><p>“I just can't thank our team enough. They've been so adaptable and nimble in trying to get things into the right place so that our student athletes could have every opportunity to compete. Much of our budget is tied to football. When we didn't have spectators in the stands for football and we were forced to reduce our number of games from a 12-game schedule to a nine-game schedule and then several of our games ended up being canceled due to pandemic related issues, that really affected our revenue stream. Our revenue decreased by about $80 million this year. We lost over half of our revenue and had to adapt very, very quickly.</p><p>“In the Athletic Department, we don't receive any revenue from the university in terms of tuition dollars or state appropriation. All of the money that is spent in Athletics is generated through Athletics. Much of that comes from television and ticket revenue, including seat premiums and the premium seating areas. When you buy a t-shirt with an MSU logo on i